Our website uses cookies to improve your user experience. If you continue browsing, we assume that you consent to our use of cookies. More information can be found in our Cookies Policy and Privacy
Policy.

Mark Ritson – Market Research

A new report confirms media agency staff are nothing like the consumers they serve, but the bigger question is whether they and marketers are market-orientated enough to know this and let customer insight guide them.

Psychographic segmentation has been out of favour for a while despite its obvious usefulness, but combining it with behavioural and addressable data creates a potent mix that could make targeting supremely effective.

Even if we smack our heads in frustration when consumers make stupid choices, there’s nothing worse than a marketer who wastes money ‘educating’ a market. Customers’ perceptions must become your reality.

I have a client who I work for each year helping to run their global marketing training. We send 700 executives a super-sexy iPad Mini at the start of the year, which has uploaded on it case studies, readings and simulations that we will use to train them during the year.

I have a very good friend, Tony, who runs an abattoir. He’s from farming stock and, in a decision driven as much by his head as his heart, bought the small local abattoir before it went bust and left hundreds of smallholders unable to butcher their livestock without long transportation journeys that would have made their animals uncomfortable and their slaughter uneconomic.

With three weeks to go before the general election, the media seems to have gone politically bonkers. You can’t turn a page or switch on the TV without an immediate update on the upcoming election. Marketers are not exempt from all this either.

Of all the concepts in the marketing universe, the most important gift we give our organisations is market orientation. It’s the omega of our discipline because it challenges a manager to recognise the fundamental truth that a) consumers are the source of a company’s success, but that b) these consumers inevitably see the world very differently from the employees that work within the company and who devise the strategies aimed at those consumers.

Of all the academic research published, the most intriguing and entertaining has always been by public health researchers on driving impairment. Since the 1950s, researchers have paid undergraduate ‘subjects’ (who will do almost anything for free booze) to drive round a test circuit, drink three large glasses of wine and then redo the task. A generation of students have confirmed the finding that when people are slightly drunk they don’t drive very well.

Featured Recruiters

Latest from Marketing Week

With home ownership among young people continuing to drop, a new market is emerging for subscription-based and “versatile” furniture brands that want to change the relationship consumers have with material goods.

Story of my CV: Performance marketing specialist Stuart Brann caught the startup bug early on in his career before taking his digital skills to more traditional financial services players like Barclaycard and TSB.

Type anything and hit “enter”

Sign in

Not registered yet?

Register and receive the best content from the only UK title 100% dedicated to serving marketers' needs.

We’ll ask you just a few questions about what you do and where you work. The more we know about our visitors, the better and more relevant content we can provide for them. And, yes, knowing our audience better helps us find commercial partners too. Don't worry, we won't share your information with other parties, unless you give us permission to do so.